Reading Plan: November 2014

Zero reviews posted in October (and one Author Guide), but I have been a busy boy, promise. Working on exciting things too, and November looks set to be a good month for me: I’m releasing my first novel in a few weeks’ time and I’m really looking forward to sharing it with the world! I’m also attempting NaNoWriMo for the first time this year. In the past, I’ve been a little sceptical about the value of rushing a project through in a month, but I’ve decided to give it a go to see what the practice of writing is like when concentrated over a short period of time (my first novel took me almost two years, after all). I have about 15,000 words for my second novel already, and will be attempting to finish this off, hitting about 60,000 words during NaNoWriMo – if you’re taking part, I’d be happy to ‘buddy’ up with you. My profile can be found here: http://nanowrimo.org/participants/thebibliofreak I know I’ve talked to some of you about my first novel a little bit or you will have seen a smattering of posts across social media about it, but for those who haven’t here’s a teaser blurb:

Reality is overrated. Sex, love, power, life: it’s gone digital. Why settle for a girlfriend with cellulite? Why spend every day working a dead-end job? These are the new days, the infinite days: plug in, get connected. Life is porn, porn is life, don’t accept anything less than the electric light show that is our digital reality.

At the end of every computer screen, a mind is being formed on the material coughed up by the web that connects us all: this is the story of one of the internet’s children, told from his own warped perspective. This is the millennial generation, the Y generation: we’re horny, lonely, afraid, and self-confident. This is our story, our reality.

Thrillingly inventive and powerfully engaging, ****: The Anatomy of Melancholy is a timely examination of life and masculinity in the digital age, a study of loneliness and mental decay, and a satire on the consumption of literature of disaffection. Brutally honest and darkly comic, it is a very modern novel about a very modern life.

But enough about me and my writing, books is what we want here, and not my books, but ‘proper’ books! I must confess, I think reading time is likely to be quite short this month with other things going on. I’ve been meaning to write reviews for The Zone of Interest and The Crying of Lot 49 for a little while now, but both of these will require a little attention on my part, as they’re tricky books. One that I’d like to write about, which hasn’t run literary circles round me just yet, is Jen Campbell’s The Bookshop Book, which was released recently. Some of you may remember I interviewed Jen when her first book, Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops, was released, and I’m looking forward to writing about her new offering. Once more it’s a delight for bookshop fanciers, but this time it’s the shops themselves, rather than those who frequent them, that are under the spotlight.

I’ll see how I get on this month, and hope to get a few things out, but at the moment reviews are very much coming when the mood strikes me and I steal a few hours. Have a great November everyone – see you on the other side, when I’m a published author, sort of.